magic spell

[dood]

Hi Everyone,

passing my painting through the critique control test before the finalization... if you could tell me things to be improved it would be great. thx !

[Matthias Kinnigkeit]

Hey dood! The magic light thing is pretty cool! I suggest you to give some more work particulary to his right hand and the foreground. As the eye of the viewer goes streight from the wizards face to the hand with his book its quite important that the hand holds up well. The background is has some nice elements like this fantasy strucktures but the foreground really damages the quality of your painting so Id advice you to tighten it up. The robe of the wizard is hit by a lot of light, but the grass a view cm lower is pretty dark for example. You may also spent some work on your technique because way you painted the image makes it look kind of muddy. May your wizard would also be glad to own some more equipment

[Capt Surge]

Is he powering up or did his spell backfire? I say work on the face, think about the expression you want to convey. Also, why is he wearing a woman's robes? Good luck on the final image. ^_^

[Marcky Marq]

First thing that threw me off were the robes, they seem to be flying in every direction if this is a backfiring spell like Capt. Surge says they should all be flowing behind him no? of if he is shooting it where does the force push them, just something to consider. I would really try and clean up your colors because it kind of looks a lot like a photoshop filter.

Expanding on Capt Surges womans robes- they look like womens robes because you are giving him cleavage and a tight fit up top. Cover the shoulders if you must have the chest open have it hang loosely

some other conceptual images you might want to look at http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Xc0gNhkLP_...emale_mage.jpg that is kind of what you have right now

you might want to try for something more like this https://d2vn94glaxzkz3.cloudfront.ne...-1920x1080.jpg

other than that make sure you are working from references the shape of your guy seems a little off

Hope this helps

[dood]

thanks a lot guys, your crits will be very helpfull...

[Black Spot]

Actually, I quite like the whole thing as is - just needs some refining mainly on the light emitting from him and he book.

[vineris]

I'd move or remove that arch under the staff. It's forming a tangent with the staff. Also, the staff leads the viewer's eye right out of the picture. I'd make the canvas wider to include the tip of the staff and probably angle it either up or down.

[jdp89]

I like the colors and values here. ;-)

I'm not sure the lighting is as consistent as it could be though. Is the purple "halo" supposed to be rim lighting, or a magical glow? If it's the former, what is the light coming from (it can't be the book, as it is slightly in front of him)? If it's the latter, shouldn't it be glowing all over his body, not just the edges that are perpendicular to the viewer?

One other thing I noticed is the swirl in the clouds behind his head. I like the effect, but the perspective isn't set up correctly for it to be directly over him (which I assume is what you want). The straight up vertical structures in the background indicated we are viewing this head on; yet the man and the clouds appear to be as if we are viewing them looking up from the ground.

You could try removing most of the background entirely, and trimming the canvas so it cuts off the bottom of the guy's robe. This would give a stronger "looking upwards" feel. It's just an idea though...I'm not as knowledgeable as most of the other forum members so you will want to take what I say with a grain of salt. ;-)

[dood]

thanx a lot for all your advice... here the update.

[paulboutros]

So I try to brighten some areas of the robe that I though were bit to dark.. On the arm holding the book I added a value in between the light impact and the dark blue of the robe. Now I kept the brutal impact of the light you wanted but smoothed a bit .... I use a curve filter to try thing on the bottom of the robe.. filters are good to try ideas at this level of the painting...